Toxic Toffee

by Amanda Flower

  “Don’t you recognize lily of the valley?” he asked.

  I did. I recognized it right away.

  Chapter 19

  “Bailey! Bailey!” Aiden’s shouts interrupted my thoughts.

  I grimaced. Aiden wasn’t going to be the least bit happy when he found out that I’d gone into the woods with Zimmerman.

  “Who’s that?” the botanist asked.

  “Just my boyfriend,” I said casually. “I told him I was coming to the rabbit farm today to speak to Eli.”

  “Bailey!” Aiden’s shouts were more urgent now.

  I spun on my heel. “I had better go see what he needs.” I bolted out of the woods.

  Aiden stood next to the Raber phone shed with his gun drawn. When he saw me running out of the woods, he lowered the gun. “Are you all right?”

  “I—”

  Before I could finish telling Aiden that I was fine, Zimmerman came out of the woods. “What’s this? You called the sheriff?”

  Aiden had his hand on his gun again and narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on here?”

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Zimmerman spat. “I can call the sheriff’s department until I’m blue in the face before I get a response, but if your girlfriend calls, you come running. Figures.”

  Aiden folded his arms. “What is happening here?”

  “I stopped by the Raber farm because I wanted to talk to Eli,” I said.

  Aiden arched an eyebrow at me. “And?”

  “He wasn’t here, but I ran into Mr. Zimmerman, who has some strong feelings about his Amish neighbors.” I didn’t go so far as wiggling my eyebrows at him to make sure that he picked up my point, but I nodded knowingly.

  Aiden frowned at me. I think he was about to say something too, but Zimmerman was faster. He held out his hand. “Liam Zimmerman. I’ve had members of your department here before to deal with the Amish, but never you.”

  Aiden raised his eyebrows. “Deal with the Amish?”

  Zimmerman went on to describe his complaint about his Amish neighbors in detail. I tuned him out. My gaze drifted to the phone shed. Zimmerman had said that a different person came each morning at five to go into the shed, and it stopped this morning. The first morning after Stephen was killed. I needed to talk to Aiden and in private.

  “I don’t work many property dispute cases, so that’s why you haven’t seen me,” Aiden was saying. “We each have our own assignments in the department.”

  I shivered because I knew one of Aiden’s assignments was homicide. I knew this from personal experience.

  “I have the feeling that you’re too important to investigate my complaint.” Zimmerman glowered at Aiden.

  “No, Mr. Zimmerman,” Aiden said calmly, as if he dealt with irrational people like Liam Zimmerman all the time. “I’m just telling you why you haven’t seen me here before this.”

  Zimmerman clenched his jaw as if he wanted to say more, but wisely, stopped himself. He wasn’t doing himself any favors by being rude to Aiden.

  Aiden glanced at me. “Bailey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  I winced. I knew that Aiden wasn’t happy with me, and his disapproval was understandable. Talking to Zimmerman alone hadn’t been the wisest move I had ever made.

  Zimmerman scowled as Aiden led me to the Rabers’ phone shed.

  I held up my hand when he turned to me. “Before you start, I see your point perfectly.”

  He arched his brow at me. “And my point would be?”

  “You were going to say that talking to Zimmerman alone was a stupid move and that I didn’t inform you I was coming here like I promised I would.” I held up my hand. “At least I thought to tell you after I was already here. So that should be good for something, right?” I gave him my brightest smile.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right. You gave me a scare, Bailey.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. Aiden had enough to worry about without adding me to the list.

  “I really don’t have the energy to talk to you about this right now. Just tell me what you learned from Zimmerman. We can deal with the other stuff later.”

  That sounded ominous, but I went on to tell him what I’d learned. He glanced at the phone shed.

  “And I found the murder weapon.” I told him about the lily of the valley in the woods.

  He listened quietly and then said, “I need to call this in.” He stepped away from me for a moment and removed his cell phone from his duty belt, turning away as he made the call.

  He spoke in a low voice, and I couldn’t catch most of it, but it sounded official by Aiden’s tone. He ended the call and walked back to me.

  I looked at him expectantly.

  “I called my crime scene guys to come here and look for evidence in the shed. If you’re right and this is the place where the letters were delivered to Stephen, then it’s a crime scene. They will also get samples of the flowers from the woods. Perhaps there is a remnant of soil in the candy we can match. It will be microscopic though and will take time and money.” He grimaced.

  I knew he was thinking that he was short of both those things.

  “Can you do that without Eli’s approval? Go into the phone shed, I mean. Isn’t he the technical owner of the property now? And no one seems to know where he is.”

  “I have some of my guys on the lookout for him, but that doesn’t matter for this part of the investigation anyway.” Aiden shook his head. “Most likely it will belong to the Amish district, and I have already spoken to the Rabers’ bishop, asking for their cooperation. The bishop promised that the district would cooperate, and that they had nothing to hide. He also said I was free to ask questions about Stephen throughout the district.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Isn’t that unusual?”

  He nodded. “Very. But the bishop was so broken up over Stephen’s death, I think he would have agreed to just about anything to have this resolved. It seems that Stephen Raber is greatly missed by his community.”

  “Does the sheriff know that you went to ask the bishop’s permission?”

  He shook his head. “No, and he wouldn’t have if it’s up to me. What he doesn’t understand is that you get much farther with the Amish if you give them the courtesy they deserve. The sheriff has never done that or learned that.” He frowned. “Most likely he knows it, but he just refuses to honor the Amish in any way.” Aiden shook his head.

  This was a battle that he had been fighting with the Holmes County sheriff for over a decade. It wasn’t going to be resolved any time soon as far as I could tell. I thought the only way to put an end to it was for Aiden to be sheriff, but he refused to run against his boss, saying it was looked down upon in law enforcement to challenge authority in such a way. That might be true, but there was a time when authority must be challenged. I knew my thinking wasn’t very Amish. I supposed that it was good my father had left the faith, so I wouldn’t have to make the choice myself later.

  A crime scene van pulled into the Rabers’ driveway, and I raised my brow. “It seems like they got here awfully fast.” Typically, it would take twenty to thirty minutes, if not an hour, to get anywhere in our rural county. I found it suspect that the crime scene people had made it to the Rabers’ in less than five minutes.

  Aiden pressed his lips together. “Very fast actually.”

  The SUV came to a stop, and Aiden walked over to it. I followed him. I wasn’t going to miss whatever it was the crime scene tech said.

  Aiden shook the other man’s hand. “Mason, how did you get here so fast?”

  Mason removed his aviator sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his uniform. “We were called into a break-in just down the road.”

  “What break-in?”

  “An Amish farm. Someone broke in to their barn and slashed all the tires on the two tractors. They did a job on the engines too. It was a real mess.”

  My brow wrinkled. The Amish farm must have been from a more liberal district than my grandmother’s
community to own gas-powered tractors. However, even more curious was that the sheriff’s department had been called about the vandalism. In most instances, the Amish would much rather settle such an issue within their own community.

  “Which farm?”

  “Their name was Beiler. It was just a small Amish vegetable farm. I spoke to Jud Beiler briefly. He seems completely taken aback over what has happened and has never seen anything like it.”

  Aiden frowned. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”

  The tech shrugged. “I don’t know. The sheriff said for us to get over there and process the scene.”

  “But I have told you before that I should be notified of any cases related to the Amish in Harvest while I’m working this homicide. They could be interconnected.”

  Mason shrugged. “I’m sorry, man. I would have thought that one of the other deputies or the sheriff would have told you.”

  Aiden clenched his fist at his side. I wondered if he was suspecting the same thing I was—that the sheriff hadn’t told him about it on purpose. Sheriff Jackson Marshall wasn’t above such a thing at all.

  “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.

  The young tech looked at Aiden expectantly, as if asking him for permission to answer my question. Aiden gave a small nod.

  “No, Beiler says that he’s in and out of the barn most of the day and everything was fine when he went to bed for the night. He discovered the vandalism when he woke up in the morning. Someone must have come in the middle of the night and done it.”

  Aiden frowned. “Did the farmer have any theories?”

  Aiden shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s the deputy’s job to ask questions. I’m just there to process the scene.”

  “Was there a deputy on the scene?” Aiden asked.

  “Not that I saw, but he might have been called away.”

  Aiden’s brow furrowed.

  “You said it was Jud Beiler on this road?” I asked.

  Mason turned to me again. “It is. You know them?”

  Aiden watched me as Mason asked this.

  It had to be the same Beilers that Zimmerman had mentioned. It was possible that there would be another family by that name on the same road—there were a limited number of surnames among the Amish—but it wasn’t very likely, and Mason’s car had come from the direction where Zimmerman had said the Beiler girl Eli was courting lived. “I don’t know them, but I think Zimmerman does. He was mentioning that the Beilers are another Amish family that he isn’t happy with.”

  Aiden pressed his lips together. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking. Zimmerman hadn’t been happy with the Beilers and their tractor had been vandalized. He hadn’t been happy with the Rabers and Stephen Raber was dead.

  Chapter 20

  I was itching to get over to the Beilers’ farm and talk to Jud about the tractor, and from what Aiden said next, I think he knew this. “Bailey, can you sit tight for a minute while I show Mason what I need him to do with the phone shed? And don’t get any crazy ideas like going to the Beiler farm,” he added under his breath.

  He knew me too well.

  Aiden led Mason to the shed. Zimmerman stood on the edge of his property and watched them with his arms crossed over his chest. I wasn’t sure there was anything the sheriff’s department could do to make Zimmerman happy. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zimmerman was the type who was never happy.

  I wanted to listen to Aiden tell Mason what evidence he needed from the phone shed, but I had already followed them once, and I doubted Aiden would tolerate it a second time. Instead I walked back to Zimmerman.

  He glowered at me. “What’s going on over there?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that something was going on or that he was most likely a suspect in a murder since the murder weapon grew in his woods. That was Aiden’s job, not mine.

  “Are they going to do anything about the trespassing on my land or the building infringing on my property?”

  “I’m sure the sheriff’s department is taking your complaint seriously,” I said, and mentally added, or at least now they will—because there is a murder involved.

  Aiden walked over to us. “Mr. Zimmerman, I’m going to need to ask you a few more questions. Before I do that, I’m going to walk Miss King to her car.”

  Zimmerman scowled at me. “Your last name is King? Isn’t that an Amish name?”

  I shrugged yet again. “Not all Kings are Amish.”

  He frowned as he considered this, which gave Aiden time to guide me by the elbow back to my car. “Go back to the candy shop.”

  “I can’t go back yet. I haven’t even tracked down Ruth Yoder to talk to her about the quilt circle.”

  He shook his head. “Wait and do that tomorrow.”

  I started to speak, but he held up his hand. “I’m not just asking because I don’t want you traipsing all over the county trying to solve a murder.” He smiled. “Even if that’s a little part of it. I say this because your grandmother asked me to remind you that you need to get back to the candy shop. Swissmen Sweets was very busy when I was there, and Margot has been pestering your grandmother nonstop over the toffee rabbit.”

  The toffee rabbit. That reminded me of another rabbit, Puff, who was at home and most likely out of carrots by now. I needed to make a stop and get some rabbit food before I did anything else.

  I wished my grandmother would call me when she needed help. We had a phone in the candy shop for business, but in my grandmother’s mind it should only be used for emergencies, and a candy crisis didn’t qualify as an emergency. I would need to talk to Charlotte about calling me when I was out and the shop got crazy. I knew my young Amish friend would be more than happy for any excuse to use the telephone, which she still found to be a novel experience. Charlotte, having grown up in a much stricter Amish community than my grandmother’s, had not been exposed to many things. There were also many things she wasn’t allowed to do, including playing the organ, which was why she’d left.

  I bit my lip. I really wanted to stay and see what happened to Zimmerman, but if Aiden said that my grandmother needed me, I had to go to her first.

  “I’ll head back to the candy shop now,” I said.

  He smiled. “Thank you.”

  I said good-bye to Aiden and walked to my car. All the while, I couldn’t help but think that I’d missed something about Zimmerman. He had motive, means, and opportunity for the murder. He was the perfect suspect. If he was the killer, then why wasn’t he keeping quiet now? He didn’t have to tell everyone how much he hated Stephen, and I didn’t believe for a second that he knew Stephen was dead unless he was the world’s best actor. I wished I could stay and be there when Aiden told him what had happened to his neighbor and questioned him about the lily of the valley growing in his woods.

  But I had two rabbits to deal with. One needed to be fed and the other needed to be made. Shaking my head, I climbed into my car.

  Instead of heading to the center of Harvest, I made a detour to Millersburg. It was the county seat and still very much a small town rather than a city. There were no cities at all to speak of in Holmes County. The closest true city was Canton, which was about forty minutes to the north on Interstate 77. I went to Millersburg because it was the only place nearby that boasted a pet shop. Hoping to make a quick trip, I ran in and scooped up everything the employee working there said a rabbit would need.

  I drove back to my little house and found Puff waiting for me in the kitchen. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes, her ears halfway up, which I interpreted to mean she was hungry. “Don’t worry,” I said to the rabbit. “I have everything here you need.” I filled a bowl with the rabbit food from the store and replenished her water dish.

  She hopped over to the water and began to drink. I put all the other supplies in the kitchen. I hated to leave her again, but I needed to get to the candy shop and deal with the toffee rabbit. If all went well, I would be done with the rabbit tonight. The sooner I d
isplayed it in the square’s gazebo, the better. Then Margot would leave me alone.

  Puff curled up on the pillow that I put on the kitchen floor for her, and I could see how she’d gotten her name. Her ears, nose, and paws were tucked into her sides, forming a circle, so that all I could see was her pristine white fluff. I took a photo of her with my smartphone and texted it to Cass with the caption, New roommate.

  She immediately texted back.You adopted a pillow.

  Rabbit. Fostering not adopted. Long story.

  I’ll call you tonight when I get home. I want deets.

  I can tell I need wine to hear this one.

  She didn’t even know the half of it. When Cass found out that I was involved in another murder investigation, she was going to hit the roof of JP Chocolates.

  With the rabbit safely tucked in the kitchen with her toys and food, I left my car in the garage and walked to Swissmen Sweets.

  As I walked to the candy shop, my mind wandered back to Stephen Raber. What could he have done to motivate someone to kill him? I couldn’t believe that it was building his barn three inches too close to Zimmerman’s property line. The oddest thing about the afternoon was that there had been no one else on the Raber farm when I got there. Where was Eli? And where was the rest of the family? I knew how the Amish dealt with tragedy. I had seen it firsthand when my grandfather died. When Daadi passed away, the community gathered around Maami, barely leaving her alone for a moment. There was always a woman from her district sitting with her. There was always a man from her district doing some of Maami’s chores.

  But there was no one on the Raber farm. No one there doing the chores or giving comfort to the family. I found this very odd, especially since everyone I spoke to mentioned how well-liked Stephen Raber was.

  It was close to seven now and the sun was setting. The streets in the village were empty. The villagers, both English and Amish, were home for the night around this hour in Harvest. Most of the shops closed at five on weekdays, six on weekends. That had been one of the hardest things for me to get used to when I moved to Holmes County. In New York almost everything was open well past eleven at night. Honestly, there were a vast number of businesses that catered exclusively to a night-owl crowd, so that old adage about the city that never sleeps was entirely true. With my long hours at JP Chocolates, I could attest to that. If it wasn’t for late-night deliveries and 24/7 food stores, I’d have subsisted only on chocolate. And I’d never admit this to Jean Pierre, but no man or woman could live on chocolate alone. Here in Holmes County, not being able to even order a pizza after seven o’clock was a bit of an adjustment for me.